when does childhood end?

the comings and goings of age

the author at six years old

I’m sat at a table which bears the detritus of my 30-year-old life; there’s an empty coffee pot, a piece of plastic pipework from the downstairs toilet, a tube of ‘Peaty’s Link Lube’ bike oil, a Toolstation catalogue, a fluffy jacket belonging to my daughter and a birthday present waiting to be wrapped. I’m here, somewhere in the mix, with my laptop and a large metal bottle of water, the extra-big kind that’s good for hydration. (I’m told that’s important as you get older.)

Life has never felt more hectic, full of unfinished jobs and dirty laundry. Children’s birthday parties have now been added to the roster of semi-regular weekend commitments, which means that whole months can go by without the downtime I had grown accustomed to in my twenties. You know, those weekends when you’d sleep in ’til 10 and potter around doing, oh, nothing very much. Maybe there’d be something good on at the cinema, maybe not. (No, I still haven’t seen Barbie).

Those days are now part of a foreign terrain, which some university friends still happily inhabit. It’s not childhood, but it’s not quite the full throes of adulthood either. Instead, you’re in this state of suspended animation, whereby adulthood is something on the horizon but mostly something other people do.

Most days I’m fine with this state of affairs, believing that I was never very good at being ‘young’; I feel more myself now than I have done in years. On other days there’s nothing I’d love more than to sit in a pub all day with nowhere to be, and no one but myself to take care of.

Cultures have different ways of marking a child’s ‘coming of age’. In Judaism girls and boys mark their commitment to their faith during a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, at which point they take responsibility for their own actions. Some Amish communities allow sixteen-year-olds to participate in Rumspringa, weekends when they will leave home to see and experience the world that lies beyond the confines of their community and its strict practices. Those who return (before the age of 26) are then baptised and welcomed as full members of the Amish church. The thinking is that Rumspringa (translated as ‘jumping around’) enables Amish youth to make this decision according to their own free will. In Japan, twenty-year-olds participate in Seijin-no-Hi, a coming of age festival, whereby they dress in traditional attire, attend a ceremony and celebrate with their friends.

These are obviously pre-determined and somewhat arbitrary ways to mark the shift from childhood into maturity. Culturally I’m sure they remain important rituals for those who participate them, but on a more personal level I’m less convinced that ‘adulthood’ is a binary state that we simply one day enter into, leaving our childhood behind. In this respect, the idea of Rumspringa appeals. I like the idea that Amish teens are encouraged to move beyond their norms, dipping their toes into different types of ‘adulthood’ before finding the one that fits.

During the past six months I’ve plotted several key events on my child-to-adult continuum. A grandparent has died, another one is ill. I suddenly find myself inhabiting emotional-support roles which my parents have always occupied. On a less serious note, my hairdresser has started congratulating me on the absence of grey hair. ‘You have no greys!’ she exclaimed, as if I should be well on my way to a head of silver.

But alongside this awareness of aging and being an adult comes the joy I find in living with a one-year-old. She is fascinated by most things, not least; the dustpan and brush, pebbles and shells and the mouldy macaroni that she found behind the back of the bin. Living with her gives me access to the world of child-like curiosity again, and it’s become a place of deep refuge during a time of grief.

Reverting to childlike state is spoken about negatively within our culture. People who return home after studies, or who take their time to figure out what they want to do with their life, are sometimes given labels like ‘man-child’. To still be living with your parents beyond say, the age of twenty-five, has increasingly been something that western culture shames people for. As if a person’s inability to sort their life out and live independently of their parents is a sign of their innate immaturity; but I’m not convinced that the two necessarily go hand in hand—recognising that you are not yet sufficient enough to live outside the family home often comes from a place of self-awareness.

Is it possible that we spend our whole lives hovering between states of ‘adulthood’ and ‘childhood’? Some children appear to have a maturity and wisdom that evades many of the adults I know, whilst some of the most youthful and energetic people I’ve encountered have been well into their eighth decade. Instead of understanding the child to adult continuum as a linear one, I wonder if it’s helpful to recognise the times when we return to states of childhood, when we need to allow ourselves to be cared for by parent-figures in our life.

My mum and dad have stayed with us overnight, and right now my Dad is doing what he normally does when he visits: fixing things. ‘I’m just going to finish off those skirting boards’ he announced about an hour ago. In that moment our relationship resumed its regular rhythm, whereby I quite happily allow him to parent me by tending to my home.

When I started writing today’s Murmuration, I thought I was going to write about my sadness at the loss of my childhood, about how the death of a grandparent marks a fixed moment in time and the end of innocence. As adults it’s tempting to feel that the things we’ve witnessed as we age cut us off from our childhood irrevocably.

More fool me.

Recommendation corner: Mapping and Cartography edition!

• Speaking of detritus,

  Molly Young
  and Teddy Blanks have done us all a favour and made a Periodic Table of NYC Trash, a scientific array of the ‘world’s’ (debatable) finest rubbish, including ‘118 naturally-occurring elements in nine groups: Apparel, Beverage, Food, Hygiene, Household, Lifestyle, Municipal, Packing, and Vices.’

• The writers Reni-Eddo Lodge and Rebecca Solnit have teamed up with Emma Watson (aka Hermione) to create an alternative City of Women Map, renaming each London tube station after a woman who has played a key role in British history and culture. ‘City of Women encourages Londoners to take a second glance at places we might once have taken for granted by reimagining the iconic Underground map.’

• Last but not least, a shout out to cartoonist, writer and reader of the Murmuration, Dave Walker. Dave has been drawing ‘maps’ of the Greenbelt festival site for quite some time. This year he’s done something slightly different, offering a posthumous cartographic review of the festival. Take a look here. Thanks Dave!

Thanks for reading, see you in a couple of weeks.

Grace

P.S. New here and not sure who I am? Head over to my website.